184 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



THUYA PLICATA, Giant Thuya 



Thuya pHcata, D. Don in Lambert, Pinus, ed. 1, ii. 19 (1824); Masters, Gard. Chron. xxi. 214; 



figs. 69, 70, 71 (1897); Sudworth, Check List Forest Trees U.S. 31 (1898); Sargent, Manual 



Trees N. America, 75 (1905). 

 Thuya gigantea, Nuttall, Jour. Philad. Acad. vii. 52 (1834); Sargent, Silva N. America, x. 129, t. 



533 (1896); Kent, in Veitch's Man. Coniferce, 239 (1900). 

 Thuya Menziesii, Douglas, ex Carriere, Traite Gen. Conif. 107 (1867). 

 Thuya Lobbi, Hort. 

 Thuya Craigiana, Hort. \rion A. Murray, Bot. Exped. Oregon, 2 (1853)]. 



A lofty tree, attaining a height of 200 feet, with a trunk remarlcably conical, the 

 base being broad and buttressed, sometimes girthing as much as 40 to 50 feet near 

 the ground. 



Bark of the trunk Assuring longitudinally in narrow thick plates, which scale off, 

 leaving exposed the reddish brown cortex beneath. On the branches, the bark only 

 begins to scale when they become old and thick. Branches horizontal, ascending 

 towards their ends, forming in England a dense, narrow, pyramidal tree, usually 

 clothed to the base. 



The 3-4 pinnate branch-systems, disposed in horizontal planes, have their main 

 axes terete and covered with long leaves ending in acute points which keep parallel to 

 the axes. The glands on these leaves are inconspicuous or absent. On the ultimate 

 axes the leaves are smaller, the flat ones scarcely glandular, and ending in mucronate 

 points ; the lateral ones keeled on the back, slightly curved, and ending in sharp 

 cartilaginous points. On the lower surface of most branchlets the foliage is streaked 

 with white, some branchlets usually remaining uniformly green. 



The male flowers are dark red in colour, cylindrical, and composed of about 

 6 decussate pairs of stamens. 



The cones when ripe do not remain erect, but are deflected out of the plane 

 of the branchlets. They are oblong, light brown in colour, and composed of 5 to 6 

 pairs of scales, of which the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th pairs are larger than the others, and 

 fertile. The scales are oval or spathulate, with a rounded apex, from immediately 

 below which externally a small deltoid process is given off. The seeds, 2 or 3 on 

 each fertile scale, are brown in colour, two-thirds the length of the scale, and 

 surrounded laterally by a scarious wing, which is deeply notched at its summit. 



Seedling} The 2 cotyledons are linear, flat, acute at the apex, and slightly 

 tapering towards the base, supported on a terete caulicle, about f inch long, which 

 ends in a long brown fiexuose primary root giving off a few fibres. The stem, terete 

 and smooth near the base, becomes ridged above by the decunent leaf-bases. The 

 first 4 true leaves are in opposite pairs, decussate with the cotyledons. Above 

 these the stem gives off a number of whorls or pseudo-whorls of longer (|^ inch) 

 sharply pointed leaves, dark green above and pale beneath, with markedly decurrent 



Figured in Lubbock, Seedlings, ii. 551, tig. 676 (1892), and Sargent, he til. l 533, fig. 12. 



